5. sa

sa summarizes information about previously
executed commands as recorded in the acct file. In
addition, it condenses this data into the savacct
summary file, which contains the number of times the command was
called and the system resources used. The information can also be
summarized on a per-user basis; sa will save this
information into usracct. Usage:

sa [opts] [file]

If no arguments are specified, sa will print
information about all of the commands in the acct
file. If command names have unprintable characters, or are only
called once, sa will sort them into a group called
***other. Overall totals for each field are gathered
and printed with a blank command name.

If called with a file name as the last argument,
sa will use that file instead of
acct.

By default, sa will sort the output by sum of
user and system time.

The output fields are labeled as follows:

cpu

sum of system and user time in cpu seconds

re

"real time" in cpu seconds

k

cpu-time averaged core usage, in 1k units

avio

average number of I/O operations per execution

tio

total number of I/O operations

k*sec

cpu storage integral (kilo-core seconds)

u

user cpu time in cpu seconds

s

system time in cpu seconds

Note that these column titles do not appear in the first row
of the table, but after each numeric entry (as units of
measurement) in every row. For example, you might see
79.29re, meaning 79.29 cpu seconds of "real
time."

An asterisk will appear after the name of commands that forked
but didn't call exec.

5.1 Flags

The availability of these program options depends on your
operating system. In specific, the members that appear in the
struct acct of your system's process accounting
header file (usually acct.h) determine which flags
will be present. For example, if your system's struct
acct doesn't have the ac_mem field, the
installed version of sa will not support the
--sort-cpu-avmem, --sort-ksec,
-k, or -K options.

In short, all of these flags may not be available on your
machine.

-a

--list-all-names

Force sa not to sort those command names with
unprintable characters and those used only once into the
`***other' group.

-b

--sort-sys-user-div-calls

Sort the output by the sum of user and system time divided
by the number of calls.

-c

--percentages

Print percentages of total time for the command's user,
system, and real time values.

-d

--sort-avio

Sort the output by the average number of disk I/O
operations.

-D

--sort-tio

Print and sort the output by the total number of disk I/O
operations.

-f

--not-interactive

When using the --threshold option, assume
that all answers to interactive queries will be
affirmative.

-i

--dont-read-summary-file

Don't read the information in savacct.

-j

--print-seconds

Instead of printing total minutes for each category, print
seconds per call.

-k

--sort-cpu-avmem

Sort the output by cpu time average memory usage.

-K

--sort-ksec

Print and sort the output by the cpu-storage integral.

-l

--separate-times

Print separate columns for system and user time; usually
the two are added together and listed as
cpu.

-m

--user-summary

Print the number of processes and number of CPU minutes on
a per-user basis.

-n

--sort-num-calls

Sort the output by the number of calls. This is the
default sorting method.

-p

--show-paging

Print the number of minor and major pagefaults and
swaps.

-P

--show-paging-avg

Print the number of minor and major pagefaults and swaps
divided by the number of calls.

-r

--reverse-sort

Sort output items in reverse order.

-s

--merge

Merge the summarized accounting data into the summary
files savacct and usracct.

-t

--print-ratio

For each entry, print the ratio of real time to the sum of
system and user times. If the sum of system and user times is
too small to report--the sum is zero--*ignore*
will appear in this field.

-u

--print-users

For each command in the accounting file, print the userid
and command name. After printing all entries, quit.
Note: this flag supersedes all others.

-v num

--threshold num

Print commands which were executed num times or
fewer and await a reply from the terminal. If the response
begins with y, add the command to the
**junk** group.

--separate-forks

It really doesn't make any sense to me that the stock
version of sa separates statistics for a
particular executable depending on whether or not that
command forked. Therefore, GNU sa lumps this
information together unless this option is specified.

--sort-real-time

Sort the output by the "real time" (elapsed time) for each
command.

--ahz hz

Use this flag to tell the program what AHZ
should be (in hertz). This option is useful if you are trying
to view an acct file created on another machine
which has the same byte order and file format as your current
machine, but has a different value for AHZ.

--debug

Print verbose internal information.

-V

--version

Print sa's version number.

-h

--help

Print sa's usage string and default locations
of system files to standard output.

Note: if more than one sorting option is
specified, the list will be sorted by the one specified last on
the command line.

5.2 Problems

I haven't been able to test this on many different machines
because the data files grow so big in a short time; our sysadmin
would rather save the disk space.

Most versions of sa that I've tested don't pay
attention to flags like --print-seconds and
--sort-num-calls when printing out commands when
combined with the --user-summary or
--print-users flags. GNU sa pays
attention to these flags if they are applicable.